Tag: African American composers

Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York, Orchestral, Premieres, Violin

The Orchestra Now at Carnegie Hall: Scott Wheeler, Julia Perry and George Frederick Bristow

Violinist Gil Shaham with The Orchestra Now conducted by Leon Botstein at Carnegie on November 18, 2021 (David DeNee)

Big name soloists, a symphonic work plucked from obscurity and a premiere. It’s an oft-used – and winning – programming formula used by The Orchestra Now. The ensemble’s performance at Carnegie Hall on November 18, 2021 was the latest in this successful framework.

TŌN is a graduate program at Bard College founded in 2015 by Bard’s president, Leon Botstein, who is also the ensemble’s conductor. Its goal is to give conservatory graduates orchestral performance experience, training in communicating with the audience, and other essential skills for concert musicians. Throughout the concert at Carnegie, the quality of the performance was outstanding. It was easy to forget (as I did throughout the evening) that this is a pre-professional group, rather than a top-tier orchestra.

The violinist Gil Shaham struck a relaxed and confident pose in front of the orchestra for the New York premiere of Scott Wheeler’s Birds of America: Violin Concerto No. 2. Though it was brand-new music (commissioned by TŌN, who also gave the world premiere performance at Bard College the previous week), Shaham played it as naturally and familiarly as he might a Mozart or Mendelssohn concerto. There was nothing hackneyed about this new work, and yet it seemed like it had been in the repertoire for decades.

A springtime walk in Central Park provided both inspiration and specific ideas for Wheeler, including the sound of a downy woodpecker, emulated by the soloist knocking on the body of his instrument in the beginning of the final movement. Wheeler credits Shaham for the especially collaborative compositional process. The violinist suggested some particular references to bird sounds in the classical and jazz canon, as well as offering technical input.  Though not always specifically identifiable, bird calls rang throughout the work, as did musical quotes ranging from Antonio Vivaldi to the jazz fiddler Eddie South.

Wheeler’s work was the highlight of the program, which also included two American composers whose music is rarely heard on the concert stage: Julia Perry and George Frederick Bristow.

Julia Perry (1924 – 1979) studied with Nadia Boulanger and Luigi Dallapiccola in Europe after attending the Juilliard School, Tanglewood and Westminster Choir College. Perry’s Stabat Mater, was sung exquisitely by the mezzo-soprano Briana Hunter, who earlier this fall appeared on the Metropolitan Opera stage as Ruby/Woman Sinner in Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Terrance Blanchard. The string orchestra accompaniment was often simple and unfussy, with a narrow melodic range that allowed Hunter’s rich and dynamic voice to infuse it with compelling drama. Perry was African-American, which seems important to point out in this era of focusing on diversity on the concert stage.

The final, and longest work on the 95 minute program was Bristow’s Symphony No. 4, Arcadian. It was the Brooklyn Philharmonic who commissioned the Brooklyn-born composer to write the work in 1872, making it the first symphony commissioned by an American orchestra from an American composer, according to the detailed program note written by JJ Silvey, one of TŌN’s oboists. Bristow’s music echoed the high romanticism and lush textures of Johannes Brahms – though somehow sounding not quite so German. The programmatic material, however, was through and through American, depicting settlers heading westward in the American frontier, with movements titled “Emigrants’ Journey Across the Plains”, “Halt on the Prairie”, “Indian War Dance”, and “Finale: Arrival at the New Home, Rustic Festivities, and Dancing”.

An especially memorable moment was the beautiful viola solo which launched the work and which returned twice more in the first movement, convincingly played by the principal violist Celia Daggy. The piece wore on just a bit too long, but it was a good trade off to have the opportunity to hear the music by this nearly forgotten 19th century composer.

The Orchestra Now has generously and conveniently made available a video performance of this entire program, livestreamed at the Fisher Center at Bard College. Watch it here.

https://youtu.be/87yj2LL4Wqc?t=1912

Brooklyn, CDs, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Interviews, jazz, Minimalism, New Amsterdam, New York, Orchestral

The Changing Same: Numinous New Music from Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.

Composer and conductor Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.

If you’re a fan of new music, be it “indie-classical” or whatever it’s being labeled this week, then you must check out the music of composer and conductor Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. Phillips’ music, composed and arranged for his ensemble Numinous, a large chamber group (or small orchestra?) of woodwinds, brass, strings, tuned percussion, electric instruments and vocalists, is a complex, finely detailed amalgam of classical, minimalist, South American, Asian, and African American influences, with a distinctive “sound” that is instantly identifiable, yet full of surprises. (You know those descriptive terms “Brahmsian” or “the Mingus effect”? It’s like that.) Phillips’ latest album, Changing Same, due out August 28 on New Amsterdam Records, is perhaps his most autobiographical musical statement to date.

While his previous recordings, Numinous: The Music of Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. and Vipassana include notes that detail the inspiration for his compositions, Changing Same has no notes; just a quote from 1966 by writer, poet and playwright Amiri Baraka (then Le Roi Jones) that describes a “post-black aesthetic,” one that unapologetically digs both the down-home and the downtown, the highfalutin and the funky, the Anglo-centric and the Afro-futuristic, the “what it is” and the “what the hell is goin’ on?” The titles for each of the six movements of Changing Same offer some additional clues . . . “Behold, the Only Thing Greater Than Yourself,” “Miserere,” “Unlimited,” “Alpha Man,” “The Most Beautiful Magic.” The first track, “19,” which can be streamed and purchased here, refers to November 19, 1970, the date of the publication of James Baldwin’s essay, “An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis,” Arnold Schoenberg’s Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke, opus 19, from 1911, and the age Phillips began studying music as an undergrad, after two semesters as a bio-chemistry major.

Changing Same is another intriguing chapter in Phillips’ journey, from growing up listening to both Holst and Prince, to conducting Numinous onstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in a performance of his score for the 1922 silent film The Loves of Pharoah, to producing this latest release. In the following interview, Phillips provides some details about that journey, and explains how his life experience, be it past, future or present-day-craziness, is reflected in the music of Changing Same.

On the back of your new album, there’s a quote by Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) from his 1966 essay, The Changing Same:

“R&B is about emotion, issues purely out of emotion. New Black Music is also about emotion, but from a different place, and finally toward a different end. What these musicians feel is a more complete existence. That is, the digging of everything.”

So, my first question with regard to this quote is, do you dig everything?

Well, of course, I have my standards. [laughs] There are things I like and don’t like.

In that essay, Baraka is explaining the spontaneous compositional processes of the creative improvisational people at that time, and putting them in a continuum of what had come before in terms of black music. He’s saying look, these guys might seem like they’re acting wild and crazy, But really, this “New Black Music” harkens back to earlier music.

When I read the essay, the quote just jumped out at me. I thought it was a perfect encapsulation of what I’m doing or hoping to have happen with my piece. With Changing Same, I wanted to take the cultural and musical things that I grew up with and incorporate them into piece. When I read Baraka’s essay, I thought, yes, I grew up with the black music continuum, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and Prince. But I grew up with classical music as well, like Holst, Bach . . . like any other composer, I have a potpourri of influences. Sometimes you can hear these influences very specifically. For example, on the fourth track, “The Most Beautiful Magic,” the initial bass line is actually coming straight from Prince’s “Purple Rain.”

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